For those of you who sometimes delve into articles or books regarding the art and practice of creative writing, you find a myriad of different ways in which writers go about drafting a story.
Some start with an idea -- a kernel shed from a dream or other inspiration and then jump headlong into it without a clue as to where they might end up. I refer to this as base jumping without the parachute. An exhilarating experience, I might add, and one that I have enjoyed on occasion, but is not what I typically do. Further, this tends to end up becoming a dead end, more often than not.
Others will spend a great deal of time taking an initial idea and then working through considerable research, character "studies", detailed outlines, etc. This is often more the case in speculative fiction where the writer needs to develop an entire world along with its associated pecularities (world building, and creating extra-terrestrial beings and the like), but also occurs in historical fiction as well. Also, not what I tend to do because more times than not that almost always stifles the creative genius part of it and the story never happens.
Then there's the "in-betweeners", those who start with an idea, stew on the notion, perhaps come up with the one-dimensional character background of the protagonist and the antagonist, develop a general storyline and then jump into it with at least a notion that they might end up somewhere good in the end.
There are variations on these three categories to one degree or another, but essentially that is the way of things. You can guess into which category I fall.
As an "in-betweener", I start off with an idea, puzzle upon it for a brief instant, and then if the notion seems "page worthy", then I start developing in my mind, first, a possible storyline. From there I will come forth with a protagonist with a problem or a desire and an antagonist who is only too willing to thwart the solution to the problem or the fulfillment of the desire. Basic character conflict, stuff. From there, I might do a little bit of outlining on paper, or perhaps merely within the confines of my hyper-active mind, and then start in with the first line. And I find this works the best for me. The creative part of me gets moving while the part of me that wants to make sure I am not wasting my time (I hate wasting time) gets a little comfort in knowing that the new story might actually have a fighting chance of surviving through a complete rough draft.
What I find occurring is a process of "body-building". I'll sit down and start cranking the words out, and that feeling of jumping from the cliff hits me (but atleast I have a parachute -- I know where the story is generally going to lead because I put some thought into it). Those primordial words and phrases, those crude sketches of character, of action, of dialogue splatter upon the page, then gel and harden as the story is constructed. Eventually, I find myself with a completed story in the very roughest of terms. It is merely a skeleton of a story, mostly action and dialogue. Scant description of the setting is in place, very little deep characterization has come forth, and the purple prose is almost non-existent. But at least I have a rough draft, something to go with, and even though it is just a skeleton, at least it is the structure of something vaguely resembling the remains of a human being (or maybe a walrus). Somewhere in the middle of all this I will do some research on various things just to make sure what I am trying to portray in the story is plausible and reasonably fits within the bounds of physics or other tenets of reality (this is especially true if I happen to be writing a hard science fiction piece -- which does not happen, being that I am more of a fantasy writer with a decidedly absurdist bent to things).
Then comes the second draft ... sometime much much later in the future. I usually set the rough draft aside for some time (weeks, months ... perhaps years) just to get a little emotional detachment, but also mainly to begin looking at the story from a critical standpoint. I want to determine at this point things like what settings, characters, and objects need to be described either thoroughly or more thoroughly than I had barely managed to do in the rough draft. I will also begin formulating more dimensions (beyond the three) to the characters -- their personalities, their motivations, their associations and interactions with other characters in the story, etc. This second draft will also have a bit more detailed research, if necessary, to make sure that things are correctly depicted as they should be. I call the second draft the musculature where I am placing the meat on the bones of that skeletal first draft.
Once done there, I might then again, let the story sit, but probably not for quite as long as I would have after the first draft (after all, I don't want the meat to spoil on the bone). In the third draft, I am at this point still refining such things as description of setting and characters, but with greater emphasis on drafting the purple prose -- placing metaphor and simile, and looking more towards using exact words to replace those initial rough draft, crude/general words. And I will also look at things such as the overall theme and the milieu of the story just to make sure I am correctly (at least from my standpoint as the writer) evoking the emotional response I want to instill in the reader. The third draft is the guts of the story -- more precisely the stomach, intestines, heart, and lungs, etc.
It is a fleshing out of the story until at this stage I have something that resembles a living breathing organism (human or walrus). There will at this point still be further revisions beyond the third draft. After all, the thing's going to need eyeballs and toe nails, and a little hair on its backside. So further revisions are necessary. And it truly is the detail work, the tedious going over and over again of the body that really makes the story something worth publishing. True, the skeleton of the idea was the foundation, the framework, but that fine stitching of skin over the muscles and organs, that pinpoint accuracy of using just the right word in the right sentence in the exact scene is what takes the idea to the point of being worthy of seeing the light of day, of being taken out for a walk around the grounds. And so with each little application of eyelashes and armpit hair I work it until the story is almost nearly perfect (at least as perfect as a human or a walrus can be), until eventually, one day what was once just a skeleton suddenly takes its first breath ... and I yell out (at least in my head) the immortal words of Dr. Frankenstein, "It's alive!"
